It was only five years between Tom Hanks' low-tech long-distance romance in the 1993 chick-flick Sleepless in Seattle and his 1998 online affair with Meg Ryan's character after they meet in a chatroom in You've Got Mail.

By 2002, the darker side of internet dating was under the microscope in the British comedy Birthday Girl, in which Nicole Kidman plays a decidedly dodgy Russian bride who lands in England after a nerdy bank teller's foray into internet dating.

By 2005, Must Love Dogs exploited the well-known internet dating myth of the man who unwittingly woos his own mother.

Even celebrities are now online: Halle Berry has said she loves to flirt in chatrooms and comedian Joan Rivers has admitted to posting a profile on Match.com where she wrote that she preferred George Clooney to Brad Pitt.

THE web is also a great way to track down an old flame. School-based reunion sites such as Friends Reunited, Classmates.com and Myoldmate also allow people to find their old workmates and neighbours.

Social networking sites are often cited as a good place to find romance - there's even a few e-books on the topic, such as the MySpace Pickup Guide. For just $US9.99 you too can "Discover How You Can Sit at Your Computer and Get Phone Numbers From Beautiful Women Without Painful Rejection, Go On Several Dates Per Week, and Get Laid Whenever You Want!"

Ever wondered where Goths go to find love? Vampire Freaks (vampirefreaks.com) is a global Goth networking site claiming 750,000 members that is often used as a pseudo-dating site for those in the know.

Zaadz.com (36,000 members) brings together those who want to change the world, or at least their chakras, and you can plan romantic anti-logging trysts with any of 7 million other eco-warriors at care2.com.

According to the findings of last year's local study, of the 2 per cent of adults that formed an online romance, half of those were partnered at the time. "Many cyberdaters may be cybercheaters," the researchers warn.

However, they found that most internet relationships spilled over into real life and weren't all that different to relationships where people had met through other avenues.

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